$560 MSI GTX 980 Ti Golden Edition

jpiniero

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Probably not a mistake, they are starting to clear out the inventory. It'd be a bad idea to buy such an expensive card though right now given what happened with Kepler. Best to wait for Pascal.
 

RussianSensation

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Sep 5, 2003
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Not sure if this is a pricing error, but Newegg via eBay is selling MSI GTX 980 Ti Golden Editions for $560, no rebate shenanigans. Seems like a really good deal to me, especially since Newegg's website is selling them for significantly more.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-GeForce...065847?hash=item46426bb5b7:g:Hf0AAOSwT5tWGRO0

Treads related to hot / good deals should be posted in our Hot Deals section:
Threads in Forum : Hot Deals with Free Stuff/Contests

Regarding the deal, it's not good deal at all considering in just 2 months we'll have a card as fast as a 980Ti with 8GB of VRAM, lower power usage, better features for less $; and a card faster than 980Ti with the same benefits. The only 980Ti that makes sense to buy now is EVGA for the 90-day step-up. Buying a 980Ti now is akin to purchasing a 780Ti 2 months before 970/980 launched = bad deal.
 
Mar 10, 2006
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Treads related to hot / good deals should be posted in our Hot Deals section:
Threads in Forum : Hot Deals with Free Stuff/Contests

Whoops, totally forgot about that sub-forum. I am sure mods will move it shortly :)

Regarding the deal, it's not good deal at all considering in just 2 months we'll have a card as fast as a 980Ti with 8GB of VRAM, lower power usage, better features for less $; and a card faster than 980Ti with the same benefits. The only 980Ti that makes sense to buy now is EVGA for the 90-day step-up. Buying a 980Ti now is akin to purchasing a 780Ti 2 months before 970/980 launched = bad deal.

Eh, if you can wait it's not a great buy, but for people who want/need to buy something now, or for people who already have one and want another, this could be appealing.

All depends on your situation, I guess.
 

nitromullet

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Jan 7, 2004
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Yeah, Ti's are definitely at an all time low right now. Seeing retailers clear out stock bodes well for an imminent release of something good.

After selling my Ti I was a bit disappointed at the lack of any sort of gaming announcement at GTC, but things are looking up.

Newegg is also selling the EVGA Classy for $580. I'm not sure if EVGA will honor a step from an Ebay sale, even though it is through Newegg which is an authorized EVGA retailer.
 

RussianSensation

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980Ti will go a lot lower. I remember it like yesterday wrt to 780Ti. With rebates the cheapest ones were $590-610, with most still hovering at $650. Then 1 week after 970/980, $350-400. $556 for a 980Ti is not a good deal. There were already better deals with game coupons too that can be resold.

Also, I do not buy the logic that a gamer cannot wait 2 months. It's simple:

- 6700K came out August/Sept 2015
- 5820K-5930K came out August 2014
- 980Ti came out May 31, 2015.

Anyone who skipped those major upgrade points is either clueless or they did so strategically waiting for Kaby Lake/Broadwell-E/14-16nm GPUs or their hardware is good enough that they skipped thsee parts. In that sense if someone didn't buy a 980Ti for 11 months, why would they be buying it now at the end of its life at barely a discount from prices 4-5 months ago? Not logical.

Right now I wouldn't recommend anyone spend more than $300 on a GPU if you need a stop-gap. 970/390 are perfect stop-gaps for 2 months.
 
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nitromullet

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What makes everyone think the next gimped pascal will be faster than a 980ti ?

This was sort of the point of my earlier post. The way I see it, if the card they are launching is worse than the 980TI they wouldn't be trying to clear TI stock. The only reason to clear out the current TI stock is if the new card is more desirable.
 

RussianSensation

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What makes everyone think the next gimped pascal will be faster than a 980ti ?

Because a next generation mid-range chip has always either outperformed last generation's flagship, or cost substantially less. This has been true for every generation for NV going back to GeForce 2.

GeForce 3 Ti 200 > GeForce 2 Ultra, GeForce 4 Ti 4200 > GeForce 3 Ti 500, GeForce 5600/5700U > 4600/4800, GeForce 6600GT > 5800/5950U, GeForce 7800GT/7950GT > 6800U, 8800GT/S > 7900GTX, GTX260 > 8800GTX, GTX460/560Ti > 280, GeForce 680 > 580, GeForce 980 > 980Ti.

How much more proof is needed? This time 980Ti isn't even a fully unlocked flagship unlike most of those cards I listed. That means 1080 beating 980Ti should be easier than ever!

Secondly, even applying 50% perf/watt increase over 980 already beats 980Ti easily, and NV is promising 2x the perf/watt increase. If 1080 after-market cards have TDP of 185W like the MSI Gaming 980/Gigabyte Windforce, they should beat 980Ti by 20-25% easily.

The only reason to clear out the current TI stock is if the new card is more desirable.

Exactly, or cheaper and is as fast.

Anyway, the deal in the OP isn't a good deal.

Newegg has the GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980Ti 6GB XTREME GAMING EDITION (GV-N98TXTREME C-6GD) [newegg.com] + The Division Game (06G-P4-0998-KR) [newegg.com] - $50 Rebate [4myrebate.com] - 10% discount code (EMCETFT22) = $534.99. Shipping is free.
http://slickdeals.net/f/8665278-gig...99-after-10-coupon-50-rebate?src=rcm_category
 
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tviceman

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Because a next generation mid-range chip has always either outperformed last generation's flagship, or cost substantially less. This has been true for every generation for NV going back to GeForce 2.

GeForce 3 Ti 200 > GeForce 2 Ultra, GeForce 4 Ti 4200 > GeForce 3 Ti 500, GeForce 5600/5700U > 4600/4800, GeForce 6600GT > 5800/5950U, GeForce 7800GT/7950GT > 6800U, 8800GT/S > 7900GTX, GTX260 > 8800GTX, GTX460/560Ti > 280, GeForce 680 > 580, GeForce 980 > 980Ti.

How much more proof is needed? This time 980Ti isn't even a fully unlocked flagship unlike most of those cards I listed. That means 1080 beating 980Ti should be easier than ever!

Secondly, even applying 50% perf/watt increase over 980 already beats 980Ti easily, and NV is promising 2x the perf/watt increase. If 1080 after-market cards have TDP of 185W like the MSI Gaming 980/Gigabyte Windforce, they should beat 980Ti by 20-25% easily.



Exactly, or cheaper and is as fast.

Anyway, the deal in the OP isn't a good deal.

Newegg has the GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980Ti 6GB XTREME GAMING EDITION (GV-N98TXTREME C-6GD) [newegg.com] + The Division Game (06G-P4-0998-KR) [newegg.com] - $50 Rebate [4myrebate.com] - 10% discount code (EMCETFT22) = $534.99. Shipping is free.
http://slickdeals.net/f/8665278-gig...99-after-10-coupon-50-rebate?src=rcm_category

I have my doubts as to whether we'll see Nvidia beat perf/$ of a $530 factory OC'd GTX 980 TI. There is so much unknown right now, it's hard to gauge just how fast GP104 will be. If it's 7.8 billion transistors and Nvidia squeaks out a 10% perf/transistor improvement with Pascal, then we're only looking at 55% faster than GTX 980. Of course having GDDR5X can inflate that improvement, too, but man it's just hard to make a good prediction.

I think 50% over GM204 is a little pessimistic while 75% over GM204 is a little optimistic. That's a large performance gap target.
 
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Feb 19, 2009
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So if you hold onto GPUs for a few years, wait a little bit and get a better deal. Not hard to see GP104 as Titan X + 20% or so @ 150W. And if it's $549, its a better deal than any 980Ti.

Even if Pascal don't beat it in perf/$ immediately, 6 months later it will as new games come out and "Game Ready" drivers shift optimization to Pascal.

For those who don't think it will happen, just look carefully at the uarch and see that the Maxwell -> Pascal leap is actually quite different in the CC/SM per Warp Scheduler and Cache/Register layout. Optimizations for Pascal will neuter Maxwell/Kepler because its going to favour warp sizes of 64 (like GCN) and that leaves the older uarch at worse utilization and bandwidth efficiency.
 

Raising

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So what's the best time window to sell my two msi 6g 980tis ?

In my euro country they still cost 750€ on the cheapest shop..
 

Kenmitch

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Oct 10, 1999
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These price cuts :p

Wishful thinking is nice. :)

Could be to entice those in the should I buy or should I wait mode currently.

My son needs a GPU for his 6700k rig he just built a couple weeks ago. Currently he's using a 7870 from his last rig to hold him over. Advised him to wait it out for now.

I'm not expecting low priced GTX 980Ti slayers to be launched from either camp for a while. When they are they'll be priced accordingly most likely.

Of course I'm all in for a price war if both camps are willing. I wouldn't complain about getting GTX 980Ti performance for $350. I'd be down for $500 for 2 x the power if they're willing. :)
 

4K_shmoorK

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Jul 1, 2015
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Feel like I sold just in time then. Traded my EVGA 980 Ti SC+ for a 290X HG10 bracket with Corsair H90 cooler and $250 (buyer payed shipping both ways).

980 Ti was too much card for my purposes.

It is kinda funny how much the price of these cards are going to come down in the next 3 months. Wouldn't be suprised to see used reference Tis going sub $400 by the end of June.
 

RussianSensation

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Sep 5, 2003
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Of course having GDDR5X can inflate that improvement, too, but man it's just hard to make a good prediction.

I think 50% over GM204 is a little pessimistic while 75% over GM204 is a little optimistic. That's a large performance gap target.

Did you check market prices of these ancient cards? They are terrible.

Cheapest 380X on Newegg is $210.

Cheapest 390 on Newegg right now is $320 after rebate (!).

Cheapest 390X on Newegg is $360.

Cheapest good Fury on Newegg is $490 (!)

These 4 AMD cards have hardly budged in price since their launch. The chance of Polaris 10 not bringing better price/performance over 380X/390/390X is almost non-existent.

On NV side, it's much the same.

Most 970 cards are selling > $300, with very few at $280-290.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...iption=gtx970&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=60

The cheapest 980 is $430, with many selling in the $450-500 range.

Unless people are predicting Pascal GP104 to be a 120W card, NV and AMD are about to completely obliterate the current stack of $220-500 cards as far as price/performance goes.

Heck, even if 1070 goes up in price from $329 to $449, it will easily beat 980/Nano and Fury in price/performance.
 
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RussianSensation

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Of course having GDDR5X can inflate that improvement, too, but man it's just hard to make a good prediction.

I think 50% over GM204 is a little pessimistic while 75% over GM204 is a little optimistic. That's a large performance gap target.

I am surprised to see you so pessimistic. Look at the performance increase from GTX560Ti to 680 and from 680 to 980. Let's look at 1440p resolution to isolate CPU limited benchmarks. For 680 I'll use 770 launch date since that eliminates many older titles and NV will have had time to provide updated drivers for 1+ year to Kepler. The same I'll do for 980 by using Titan X launch.

680 was 92% faster than 560Ti at 1440p
perfrel_2560.gif


980 was 71% faster than 680 at 1440p
perfrel_2560.gif


That means the only way for 1080 to be only 50% faster than 980 is if NV failed massively with Pascal, they lower TDP vs. 980, they purposely gimp it with lower clocks out of the box. If things go according to plan, 1080 should be at least 60-70% faster than 980 at 1440p.

Applying that to today:

980 = 67%
980Ti = 83%
1080 = 980 * 1.6x faster = 107%

107% / 83% = 29% faster than a reference 980Ti.

The chance of GP104 not delivering better price/performance than 980Ti with either 1070 or 1080 is close to 0%. Even if 1080 has just 40% increase in perf/watt, 980Ti will still lose.

perfrel_2560_1440.png


980 = 67% * 1.4x faster (complete low-ball of Pascal's potential) = 93.8%

I know people hate knowing their $650 980Ti is about to get obsoleted but it's happening. It happened with 570/580 ->670/680, it happened with 780/780Ti -> 970/980, and it will happen with 980Ti -> 1070/1080.

This forum is weird lately. Polaris 10 is being overhyped and GP104 is being underhyped. I don't get it. :sneaky:

The only explanation I have is AMD fans are trying to save face by not having GP104 steamroll Polaris 10 and AMD having nothing until Vega. OTOH, 980Ti/Titan X users are in denial that their card is about to get embarrassed in all metrics, the same way 970/980 made 780Ti look like outdated/overpriced and power hungry tech Day 1 of their release.

I can contemplate the idea that NV will leave headroom for GTX770 style refresh but that only means GP104 will have huge overclocking headroom. So if you are going to use the argument that NV will try to lowball clock speeds on early 1070/1080 cards, this will be easily fixed via OCing.

So what's the best time window to sell my two msi 6g 980tis ?

In my euro country they still cost 750€ on the cheapest shop..

Let's see what the leaks show closer to end of May. We may find out that NV is doing a hard launch May 31st-June 4th, or they may do a soft launch with retail cards shipping June 15th. IMO, 2 weeks before retail launch is the latest time to dump them. Do new gen cards appear almost immediately at launch in your country? If I had 980Ti SLI, I'd be putting them on sale May 15th already. The big downside is that for most of June may only have reference cards and AIBs might only release the better versions towards late of June. If you have a decent spare card you can borrow from a friend, I'd put them up on sale mid-May at the latest.

So if you hold onto GPUs for a few years, wait a little bit and get a better deal. Not hard to see GP104 as Titan X + 20% or so @ 150W. And if it's $549, its a better deal than any 980Ti.

Even if Pascal don't beat it in perf/$ immediately, 6 months later it will as new games come out and "Game Ready" drivers shift optimization to Pascal.

For those who don't think it will happen, just look carefully at the uarch and see that the Maxwell -> Pascal leap is actually quite different in the CC/SM per Warp Scheduler and Cache/Register layout. Optimizations for Pascal will neuter Maxwell/Kepler because its going to favour warp sizes of 64 (like GCN) and that leaves the older uarch at worse utilization and bandwidth efficiency.

Spot on. Don't forget that AIBs will go beyond 150-160W TDP and release factory pre-overclocked versions with another 10-20% performance boost. Remember GTX460 FTW? This goes way back.

Launch Pascal benches are not going to be indicative of its true performance relative to 980Ti because NV will not have fully optimized Pascal drivers, will not have fully abandoned Maxwell optimizations, and June 2016 PC games aren't going to be as graphically demanding as 2017-2018 PC games. We saw this scenario play out with 680 vs. 580, 980 vs. 780Ti.

My son needs a GPU for his 6700k rig he just built a couple weeks ago. Currently he's using a 7870 from his last rig to hold him over. Advised him to wait it out for now.

You could buy an EVGA 970 and just step-up in 90 days.
 
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IEC

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Also keep in mind this exact card was $515 after $25 off eBay/PayPal coupon and $30 MIR just a few weeks ago.

IMO there's a reason they are putting them on sale - clearing inventory for the new king, the 1080/1080 Ti :)
 

Leyawiin

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Nov 11, 2008
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Also keep in mind this exact card was $515 after $25 off eBay/PayPal coupon and $30 MIR just a few weeks ago.

IMO there's a reason they are putting them on sale - clearing inventory for the new king, the 1080/1080 Ti :)

Especially given this is kind of a premium one with the copper HSF. If they're cutting it down Pascal has to be coming soon and be like Kepler vs. Maxwell at launch.
 

RussianSensation

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Since AMD no longer drops prices like they used to in the past under Rory, and NV hates price drops, it sets up a perfect storm for devaluation of old cards and for new cards to look great. We have 390X selling for almost $100 more than 290X it replaced, and 980/Fury are still going for $430-490.

If 1080 is 2560-3072 CUDA core card with 1480mhz Boost clocks and 10Gbps GDDR5X, 980/980Ti are toast. 980 has reference boost of 1202 and 2048 CUDA cores. That means with no increase in IPC, a 2560 CUDA core 1080 would be 54% faster than 980, and with 3072 cores, it would be 85% faster!

I don't get why there is so much fear mongering about new GP104 cards barely beating existing cards. It makes no sense.
 
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raghu78

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Since AMD no longer drops prices like they used to I n the past under Rory, and NV hates price drops, it sets up a perfect storm for devaluation of old cards and for new cards to look great. We have 390X selling for almost $100 more than 290X it replaced, and 980/Fury are still going for $430-490.

If 1080 is 2560-3072 CUDA core card with 1480mhz Boost clocks and 10Gbps GDDR5X, 980/980Ti are toast. 980 has reference boost of 1202 and 2048 CUDA cores. That means with no increase in IPC, a 2560 CUDA core 1080 would be 54% faster than 980, and with 3072 cores, it would be 85% faster!

I don't get why there is so much fear mongering about new GP104 cards barely beating existing cards. It makes no sense.

RS performance rarely scales perfectly with increased core count and increased clocks. But yeah I do expect a GP104 to be 30-35% faster than 980 Ti. I also expect a stock GP104 to be clocked close to 1.6 Ghz boost clocks. There is also a good hint fom Drive PX2 that GP106 will clock around 1.6 Ghz.

http://videocardz.com/58973/nvidia-pascal-gp106-gpu-pictured-up-close

Given the smaller die size of GP106 vs GM206 (which puts GP106 at 170-200 sq mm) I think we will see 1280 cc in GP106. Since the Drive PX2 has 8 TFLOPs from 2 GP106 GPUs the clocks for GP106 work out as 1280 x 2 x 1.6 Ghz= 4 TF
 
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RussianSensation

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RS performance rarely scales perfectly with increased core count and increased clocks. But yeah I do expect a GP104 to be 30-35% faster than 980 Ti. I also expect a stock GP104 to be clocked close to 1.6 Ghz boost clocks. There is also a good hint fom Drive PX2 that GP106 will clock around 1.6 Ghz.

:thumbsup: Same. I actually made an error claiming that 980 reference boosts to 1202mhz. The stock rating is 1216mhz but in the real world it actually reached 1265mhz. NV tends to underrate their real world Boost. If 1080 launches with 1550mhz Boost, I expect real world to be close to 1.6Ghz. In my calculation I already accounted for non-linear scaling of GP104 because I also assigned 0 increase in IPC. Therefore, I penalized GP104 right off the beat since I believe it will have increased efficiency vs. Maxwell. That's why my estimates are actually on the conservative side.
 
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Kenmitch

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You could buy an EVGA 970 and just step-up in 90 days.

He's willing to wait it out. He's a procrastinator and money frugal so it'll be easy for him. Took him forever to take the plunge and upgrade his rig. The tipping factor for him was a case. He really like Razer products and happened to see the NZXT S340 Razer addition and decided it was time.

Thinking he's going to need whatever next gen gpu has the best features, bang for buck, and some lasting power. Buying a EVGA and planning on a step-up could turn out to be a dead end in the end.
 

RussianSensation

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He's willing to wait it out. He's a procrastinator and money frugal so it'll be easy for him. Took him forever to take the plunge and upgrade his rig. The tipping factor for him was a case. He really like Razer products and happened to see the NZXT S340 Razer addition and decided it was time.

Thinking he's going to need whatever next gen gpu has the best features, bang for buck, and some lasting power. Buying a EVGA and planning on a step-up could turn out to be a dead end in the end.

I really like the classy look of the Razer NZXT line. With a 6700K, that CPU (if overclocked to 4.6-4.8Ghz) should last him 5 years. I figure the next true architecture from Intel is Icelake in 2018 (let's assume 15% increase in IPC), and then the next one after is in 2021 (let's assume another 15% increase in IPC, since Intel ditched Tick-Tock in favour of a 3-year-cadence). If we assume that 2021 CPU can overclock to 5.3Ghz => 5.3Ghz * 1.15^2 / (4.7Ghz 6700K) = 49% increase. Based on that, i7 6700K is a solid foundation for a gaming rig for years to come.

As far as lasting power of the GPU, I'd always advise a $350-400 GPU, sell, get another $350-400 GPU, rather than buy a $650 one and hold on to it for 5-6 years. Also, we've seen R9 290X CF or 970 SLI destroy 980 for most of their life despite very similar price of those setups. I predict 1070 SLI to repeat 970 SLI > 980 this time as well. Since 1070 should also have 8GB of VRAM, this time the lack of VRAM wouldn't be a detriment of going with 1070 SLI. The only known is how well DX12 games will work with SLI/CF over the next 2 years.